Shining Soul

"Great game but has flaws"

First of all I really wanted to give this game an 8. This is a great game in my opinion. But like I said, it does have a few flaws.

Sound-The music is pretty good. The opening music is nice and the dungeon music is alright, though it gets a little repetitive. But when you're in the action you don't really pay attention to the music.

Graphics-For a Game boy Advance game, the graphics are good. The character sprites are nice and the enemy ones are good too. Not much to say on that...

Gameplay-Now the most debated part of this game. The game played a lot like Diablo. Each character has his or her own usable weapons, armor, and skills. The game itself is pretty easy, that is until you get to advance mode. The bosses get challenging, but all follow a pattern that makes them easy to beat. Almost all of the dungeons have 10 floors and have tons of enemies to fight. The enemies never give you time to rest and the action is pretty much non-stop.

Replay Value-There are four different characters and eight game slots, so you can play as all of the characters. Each one gives you a different experience. Going through advance mode adds more replay value, as it adds a more difficult challenge. But after you get through advance mode, you might not want to start all over with the game. In all I have put in about 8-12 hours of gameplay.

Multiplayer-This is the best part of the game. I've only played two player, but it was really fun. There was more action and less running around. Teamwork is pretty important because you don't want to leave your friend alone to fight hordes of enemies and then hear him yelling at you to get over to where he is. You have to stay together and help each other to get through the dungeons.

Flaws-The major flaw of this game is that you cannot save and continue during the game. So you could be at the floor right before the boss and be extremely low on batteries and have to make the decision of whether or not to risk fighting the boss or losing all of your progress. The next is that you cannot pause the game during battle. So if you forget to assign your healing items then you're pretty much in big trouble.

Overall this is a pretty fun game that can be enjoyable for just about everyone. Shining Soul II is sure to be much better and hopefully remove the major flaws of the first. Hope this review helped.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 02/20/04